Subject:Italian seaside town planning miniskirt ban

A seaside city in Italy is planning to ban miniskirts and other revealing clothing to improve what the mayor calls standards of public decency.

Castellammare di Stabia is trying to be the latest location in Italy to make use of new powers to crack down on what is deemed to be anti-social behaviour.

Mayor Luigi Bobbio said the regulations would help "restore urban decorum and facilitate better civil co-existence".

Offenders would face fines of between 25 ($35) and 500 euros ($696).

"Nothing too revealing" is the new policy Mayor Bobbio wants to enforce, says the BBC's Duncan Kennedy in Rome.

That means a tough new dress code which would effectively outlaw everything from miniskirts to low-cut jeans when people walk around Castellammare di Stabia, our correspondent adds.

Mr Bobbio, from the centre-right People of Freedom party, says he wants to target people who are "rowdy, unruly or simply badly behaved".

There will also be a ban on sunbathing, playing football in public places, and blasphemy, if the proposals are approved at a council meeting on Monday.

"I think it's the right decision," a local parish priest, Don Paulo Cecere, told the Cronache di Napoli newspaper. "It's also a way of combating the rise in sexual harassment."

Castellammare di Stabia is latest city to make use of the extra powers handed down by Prime Minister Silvio Berlusconi's government to mayors, in the effort to fight crime and confront anti social behaviour.

In other places they have banned sandcastles, kissing in cars, feeding stray cats, wooden clogs and the use of lawn mowers at weekends.